Not a good day for our children, one way or another. And no, I am not thinking primarily about the Osborne-Laws decision to abolish the child trust fund, one of Labour's more imaginative schemes, for reasons Zoe Williams explains well in today's Guardian.

The Old Bailey jury convicted two small boys, 10 at the time, of attempted rape of an eight-year-old girl who changed her evidence – substantially – during cross-examination by barristers, albeit in gentler "adapted" procedures than normal.

It's never wise to be dogmatic about verdicts when most of us weren't in court to hear exactly what the jury heard. But this case should almost certainly not have come to court, as experts – as well as the Daily Mail – rushed to proclaim last night.

Good, but don't expect a jittery Tory government to heed calls – even from their coalition partners – to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 10. The coalition has problems enough, problems quite likely to be compounded by the fallout from yesterday's £6bn cuts package, which struck me as both priggish and naive.

But nothing I have read or heard during the trial makes me think this incident should have come to court, let alone a trial at the Old Bailey.

It's not that children aren't capable of doing nasty things to each other. You can observe that in parks and playgrounds anywhere – and closer to home too. My small grandchildren engage in spasmodic warfare all the time, some of it downright malicious, bless them. What Peter Harvey's pupils did to that poor teacher was monstrous too.

In the Old Bailey case of the two convicted boys the background story – the Mail is always good, if manipulative – is familiarly depressing, albeit complicated. The pair live on a tough estate in Hayes, west Middlesex, near Heathrow, and come from broken homes.

Multiple partners, foul language, big dogs, suspected drugs ... the usual bleak picture. But Boy A is apparently a model pupil at school, a Chelsea fan who does his homework enthusiastically. Boy B was at a special school and more difficult but also of good character.

Neighbours were shocked at what happened to "normal kids" who were probably just fooling around as kids do. But even if it was a much more serious assault – the jury believed the prosecution's version – we shouldn't really be having this conversation, should we?

It would not happen in Scotland – or across most states in Europe – where such cases are dealt with by special children's panels.

Prepubescent children accused of rape? It reminds me of that Sun scoop, claiming that a tot had become a father at 10. You only had to look at his photo to know it couldn't be true.

Lurking behind this is the sexualisation of children, something David Cameron has spoken against but will find it hard to act upon without offending powerful commercial interests, retailers as well as the media.

Public opinion, itself in a fair old muddle about the sexualisation of wider society – it would be comic if it wasn't sad – gets easily wound up about it, fearful of its children and sex, prey to silly "broken Britain" rhetoric. There have always been pockets of deprivation and depravity – even at Eton – it's just that nowadays we know so much more about it all.

There were, incidentally, 80 rape convictions against children between 12 and 14 (significantly older, I concede) in 2005-08. It is a near-one-in-three conviction rate, far higher than for adults and grounds for suspicion in itself.

The sheer futile awfulness of hamfisted applications of the law is brought home by the totally unrelated Harvey case at Nottingham crown court, nothing to do with sex and all to do with out-of-control children misbehaving.

Except in this case they provoked an overstressed teacher into a really serious assault. Harvey, 50 and hard-pressed, attacked a 14-year-old with a dumbbell. In this instance the CPS decided he had to be prosecuted, though the trial judge, Michael Stokes QC, expressed surprise. Another judge unhappy with his own court?

You can read the Guardian's account here. It's awful. One girl had brought a video camera into class to film the teacher's humiliation. Where was the school's headteacher in all this? Why were these children allowed to run amok like that? What disciplinary action was taken against the ringleaders – or their parents?

Harvey, who spent eight months in custody, received a two-year community service order in court yesterday. His victim's family "stormed out of court" when he was – surely rightly? – acquitted of attempted murder last month.

That tells you quite a lot about them and about the way in which disruptive pupils get too much encouragement at home – and teachers not enough support against vexatious allegations. The Cameron coalition promises to tackle these social imbalances too.